Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

“Introduction to Map Use” course were surveyed in the fall of 2004 about which of11 topics they favoured the most, only 23.81% chose ArcView (though that was themost-favoured topic overall); another 30.16% favoured ArcView the least.Why is it so difficult to integrate GIS in Geographic Education?GIS is more challenging for teachers than previous technical innovations. Universitiesare able to present software as a new tool for geography, but typically they areunable to integrate it in a practical system for use in schools. In other words, there isa significant gap between teaching about GIS and teaching with it. Worse, universitieshave not yet discovered how to help future teachers really facilitate student learningwith GIS. A combination of problems seems responsible for this: These include thecomplexity of the software (especially ArcView), lack of education-specific training(at colleges, universities and elsewhere), lack of time to prepare lessons (and fewproject-publications that are easy to adopt), a shortage of special data for geographylessonsat schools, and of course the necessary conviction that the effort to integrateGIS in the classroom is worth it. Needless to say, there are also basic but importantissues about the lack of equipment, insufficient funds for site licenses and softwareupgrades, and communication gaps between teachers in the classroom and schooladministrators who are likely to remain unaware of the potential of GIS for theirstudent populations.Three steps to successful curriculum implementation of GISEarly on, many institutions made the mistake of trying to directly adapt or followproject-learning with GIS (Figure 1: step 3) without sufficiently preparing studentsto do so (Figure 1: steps 1 and 2 GIS understanding and GIS-techniques). Nowuniversities and schools both have realized that it is necessary for students to climbstep by step in order to reach GIS-competence and to run a successful GIS-projectusing their own data-surveyed in the field.Step 3:Project-learning with GIS (active students)with given data or own data-survey in the fieldStep 2:Teaching with GIS (Teacher-Presentation)Map-Production, Map Design, Using GIS-Maps to solve geographicquestionsStep 1:Teaching about GIS(Teacher-Presentation – Theory)Introduction of Geographic InformationSystems: potential, real-world-relevanceFigure 1. Steps to successful curriculum implementation of GISNote:In addition to work with Arc View/Arc Explorer etc.,web-based GIS-tools (Online-GIS) are a successfulway to win teachers to integrate small GIS-modulesin geographic education86